Booking Through Thursday

What’s your favorite book that nobody else has heard of? You know, not Little Women or Huckleberry Finn, not the latest best-seller . . . whether they’ve read them or not, everybody “knows” those books. I’m talking about the best book that, when you tell people that you love it, they go, “Huh? Never heard of it?”


I couldn't resist the opportunity to mention a book I read a few years ago and have yet to meet anyone to discuss it with. The book is Anya by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer. Written in 1974, Anya is a novel about a Polish woman's experience during the Holocaust. I don't have words to tell you how beautifully written this book is, but I think it is an important book for several reasons. First of all, its publication date - 1974 is not that far removed from when these atrocities occurred. Secondly, the first portion of the book deals with Anya and her family's life before the Holocaust. The life of a happy and well-to-do family. I think so many times, Holocaust literature begins with the holocaust. In this book, we see these people in the beginning not as victims but just as people. Like you and I. I know some people just cannot bring themselves to read books about this period, but if you can, I cannot recommend this highly enough.

Booking Through Thursday

Have you ever written an author a fan letter?

Did you get an answer?

Did it spark a conversation? A meeting?

(And, sure, I suppose that e-mails DO count . . . but I’d say no to something like a message board on which the author happens to participate.)



When I read today's question I just had to answer in order to mention a book that perhaps didn't get the attention it deserved. I emailed Dara Horn in April of 2006 with a question about her book The World to Come. Horn wrote back and in a two page letter discussed the questions I presented to her, and her thought processes in writing the part of the book I was inquiring about. She also expressed her appreciation that I, a 'real reader' had corresponded with her. It was an amazing response, I never dreamed she would have taken so much time to explain everything the way she did.

Here is Amazon's description of this novel:

Following in the footsteps of her breakout debut In the Image, Dara Horn's second novel, The World to Come, is an intoxicating combination of mystery, spirituality, redemption, piety, and passion. Using a real-life art heist as her starting point, Horn traces the life and times of several characters, including Russian-born artist Marc Chagall, the New Jersey-based Ziskind family, and the "already-weres" and "not-yets" who roam an eternal world that exists outside the boundaries of life on earth.
At the center of the story is Benjamin Ziskind, a former child prodigy who now spends his days writing questions for a television trivia show. After Ben's twin sister Sara forces him to attend a singles cocktail party at a Jewish museum, Ben spots Over Vitebsk, a Chagall sketch that once hung in the twins' childhood home. Convinced the painting was wrongfully taken from his family, Ben steals the work of art and enlists his twin to create a forgery to replace the stolen Chagall. What follows is a series of interwoven stories that trace the life and times of the famous painting, and the fate of those who come into contact with it.

From a Jewish orphanage in 1920s Soviet Russia to a junior high school in Newark, New Jersey, with a stop in the jungles of Da Nang, Vietnam, Horn takes readers on an amazing journey through the sacred and the profane elements of the human condition. It is this expertly rendered juxtaposition of the spiritual with the secular that makes The World to Come so profound, and so compelling to readers. As we learn near the end of the beautiful tale, "The real world to come is down below--the world, in the future, as you create it." --Gisele Toueg

This was a truly unique book, I would recommend it.

Booking Through Thursday

1. Do you have any old school books? Did you keep yours from college? Old textbooks from garage sales? Old workbooks from classes gone by?

2. How about your old notes, exams, papers? Do you save them? Or have they long since gone to the great Locker-in-the-sky?

Great question! Just a few weeks ago I was looking for something and came across some heavy boxes on a high shelf in the basement that had not been opened since we moved in. I had to call in backup in the form of my husband. One box was full of his books that we knew we had and hadn't been able to locate - his Kurt Vonnegut collection, In Cold Blood, etc. The other box was filled with my college textbooks and papers. He was appalled, and I was told in no uncertain terms to 'get rid of them'! All the books and notebooks went to the trash. I was not able to part with my laboratory notebooks - it's hard to believe I ever wrote that neatly and especially that I had any idea what those labs were about. I also kept my 'mortar boards' which is the name of the university school calendar/planner that the school published yearly. I have a habit of keeping my planners and love to look back over them to see what I was doing so long ago or even last year.

I suspect there may be a box somewhere down there that contains old exams and papers I've been unable to part with, including that biochemistry exam I aced in 1993 after studying for 30 hours.

There is actually one box down there full of my textbooks. When we moved in here there was some sort of unused opening in the basement wall which our cat would not stay away from. That box of books fit perfectly and remains there. I'm certain all the books are ruined and the box will not be opened again.

Booking Through Thursday

1. Do you cheat and peek ahead at the end of your books? Or do you resolutely read in sequence, as the author intended?

2. And, if you don’t peek, do you ever feel tempted?

I used to do this quite a bit in my younger days. For me, it's sort of the same as peeking at your Christmas gifts - a little unsatisfying in the end. The only time I do this now is if I am not enjoying a book and not planning on finishing it at all. In that case, I'll sometimes skim the rest or just go straight for the last couple of pages.

I think I am tempted to look ahead! One thing I will admit to doing is looking a few pages ahead if I'm at a critical point in the storyline and I have to stop reading for some reason. Usually I am at work when I do this.